Best note taking app for iPad

[Bpad]

It's Evernote for me. I am a noob iPad user and was looking for a notebook app for it. Saw some recommendations for Evernote in this thread, installed on iPad, PC and Blackberry... and have now discarded(sort of) the real notebooks(3) I was lugging around and it's GREAT! Syncing between PC and iPad is seamless, emailing notes is a breeze... will definitely keep this! Having a little bit of trouble with BB though, my notes don't seem to be showing up on it, although I see the notebooks when I tried to make a new note

 

[Mickey330]

Nevermind. I was confused as to where in this thread I was...

Sorry.

 

[DDustiNN]

Well with class starting on Monday, it was time to make a decision and get some practice in so I can take notes.

For me, it came down to Notes Plus and Note Taker HD. I finally bought Notes Plus yesterday and I have to say I absolutely love it. The lack of typing ability is what gave Note Taker HD the final blow.

With Notes Plus, I can hand-write or type anywhere on the paper at any time. I also like the deletion gesture. If you're writing and you make a mistake, just swipe back and forth across what you want to delete and it's gone. Awesome! With pen and paper, I always had to scribble it out.

I also like the ability to select anything that has been written and move it around. Sometimes I'd be taking notes during class and the instructor would go on a slight tangent, then go back to the original topic... but then I had no extra lines to add more notes! Now I can select a line (or however much I want) and simply move it (or you also have the option to delete a selection). It's so awesome.

The auto-shape detection is no good for me, because my diagrams usually require smaller shapes... the shapes have to be rather large for them to be auto-detected. It's a cool feature, for sure, but I just don't see it being used much by me. However, I absolutely love the fact that I can draw anywhere on the page, as well as mix writing and typing, so that's still a major plus.

Also, you have a quick toolbar that uses the most recent pens you've created. I created a fine blue pen for writing (looks just like the gel pens I love), and a think semitransparent pink one that functions as a highlighter. Very cool.

Another bit of icing on the cake is the audio recording. You can record a lecture in your notebook! I played around with it a bit and found that if you stop the recording, and then start a new one (on the same page), it basically just adds another track. Good for breaks and stuff.

But the absolute best feature, by far, is the zoom-writing mode (or whatever it's called). Similar to Note Taker HD, you have a zoomed in box that you write in, which writes smaller text on the areas where the box is located on the paper. It's kind of hard to explain without seeing it in action. But it auto-scrolls to the right in a very intuitive way, and you can also perform a carriage return function via a quick button. It sounds weird, but it's really amazing and very easy to use.

At any time, you have a variety of options to export a whole notebook or individual pages as .pdf document (including all markups) via e-mail or GoogleDocs.

For simply taking notes (handwritten or typed), Notes Plus is incredible. I give it 4/5 stars.

To get that last 5/5 star, I feel like it could use these features:
- import files (.pdf, .doc, .ppt) and be able to insert them as pages in an existing note, to allow for annotations
- be able to delete an audio recording from a page
- export an audio recording as .mp3
- allow shape auto-detection to accept smaller shapes

If it had those features, it would be absolutely perfect. I believe the developer is actually working on some of those, so I look forward to a future update.

Overall, well worth the money for any college student (or anyone needing to write notes). I may even bring my iPad to work now and use it to take notes during meetings.

 

[muniswarv]

Hi,
I have recently started using Ipad.
I also write tone of notes. Till now I have tried the following apps for Ipad.
1: penultimate (1$)
2: Noteshelf (3$)
3: Jotbook (free)
4: neo.notes (free)

I have listed some of the feature that I have got and what I would like to have

Features | Penultimate | Noteshelf
Picture annotation | No | Yes
back-up the notes | Yes | Yes ( back-up whole shelf)
Share the notes in editable format |Yes ( .pen ) | No
Free hand drawing |Yes | Yes
Typing the text |NO | NO
Search the type in text | NO | NO
Thumb nail view of the pages |Yes |Yes
Take pages from one note to another | No |No
Zoom and write the text | Yes | Yes
Quality of free hand drawing | Good |Good

 

[pluto6]

I am looking for advice on what people are using. I have read through the thread, and have bought a couple of note taking apps, but don't really have a need for them. Until I go back to school this summer.....

Grad school, apparently what they do is post the lecture using power point slides. So, what I guess students are doing is either importing the slides, or converting the powerpoint to a PDF, then importing.

So, I need something with reasonable good file abilities to keep all the various classes organized, and the note taking would be marking up either powerpoint slides or a pdf... Obviously ability to save these to some format that is either to work with is necessary. At least one student recommended iAnnotate. Looking through the forums, it looks like there may be others here doing the same thing - what apps are you using successfully? THanks.

 

[Sridhar]

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li3q1Lr1vxk

permalink of this video: http://notesplusapp.com/about/demo-video

It is current on sale with 80% price reduction: $0.99

Can you pls update this thread when the $0.99 special is back?

 

[bimo]

So, I need something with reasonable good file abilities to keep all the various classes organized, and the note taking would be marking up either powerpoint slides or a pdf... Obviously ability to save these to some format that is either to work with is necessary. At least one student recommended iAnnotate. Looking through the forums, it looks like there may be others here doing the same thing - what apps are you using successfully? THanks.

I'd recommend using Noterize, which allows you to annotate both PDF and Powerpoint slides. There are a lot of apps out there to annotate PDF files, but few that allow you to annotate both. It's a decent app, for handwriting it will not smoothen your handwriting like some other handwriting note taking apps out there. The good thing is it allows you to save any changes you made, and you can send directly to yourself via email.

 

[pluto6]

Thanks Bimo - I will check that one out.

Anyone know of a note taking app that will let you "import" a picture, or text and pictures from the internet, like a copy and paste operation?

The idea then would be to be able to mark this up and then save to whatever format - likely pdf?

Right now, it looks like having to copy and paste to a word processor on a PC, then turn it into a pdf, then send either via e-mail, or through a cloud type system.. really cumbersome...

 

[Mickey330]

Thanks Bimo - I will check that one out.

Anyone know of a note taking app that will let you "import" a picture, or text and pictures from the internet, like a copy and paste operation?

The idea then would be to be able to mark this up and then save to whatever format - likely pdf?

Right now, it looks like having to copy and paste to a word processor on a PC, then turn it into a pdf, then send either via e-mail, or through a cloud type system.. really cumbersome...

In Safari, you can create a bookmarklet that'll let you save a web site as a PDF (no reason why you can't have just a picture opened in a site). Once the site has been saved, if you touch the screen, you'll get an "open in" option (all this in Safari). Select the appropriate PDF-annotationg app and off you go.

Will this do? Or, is this what you are looking for? If need be, I can post the script to make this bookmarklet - should you not have/can't find it.

Marilyn

 

[chowdown]

Anyone know of a note taking app that will let you "import" a picture, or text and pictures from the internet, like a copy and paste operation?

Noterizer will do that. However, preliminary investigations have revealed that it's a bit fiddly...I might need to investigate more.

 

[pluto6]

In Safari, you can create a bookmarklet that'll let you save a web site as a PDF (no reason why you can't have just a picture opened in a site). Once the site has been saved, if you touch the screen, you'll get an "open in" option (all this in Safari). Select the appropriate PDF-annotationg app and off you go.

Will this do? Or, is this what you are looking for? If need be, I can post the script to make this bookmarklet - should you not have/can't find it.

Marilyn

Marilyn,
Is this possible on the iPad Safari? If so, I would love to see how to do that. Thanks so much.

 

[Mickey330]

In Safari, you can create a bookmarklet that'll let you save a web site as a PDF (no reason why you can't have just a picture opened in a site). Once the site has been saved, if you touch the screen, you'll get an "open in" option (all this in Safari). Select the appropriate PDF-annotationg app and off you go.

Will this do? Or, is this what you are looking for? If need be, I can post the script to make this bookmarklet - should you not have/can't find it.

Marilyn

Marilyn,
Is this possible on the iPad Safari? If so, I would love to see how to do that. Thanks so much.

Yep, it's possible in iPad's Safari. Here are the steps (you have to be in Safari to do this) - I apologize if it's too simplistic, but I don't know your level of expertise. Please forgive. Anyway. here's the steps:

1) Bookmark any site (in iOS 4.2.1, hit the arrow and "Add Bookmark"). Name the bookmark "Save in PDF" or something like that...

2) Edit that bookmark by opening the bookmarks folder. Press the book-looking icon and find the bookmark you just made. Press the "Edit button" and then press the bookmark words.

3) The second line down is the URL address for the bookmark. Erase everything in it ("X" it out) and paste the script below into it:

javascript: pdf_url=location.href;location.href='http://pdfmyurl.com?url='+escape(pdf_url)


* NOTE: Take out the space between the colon after "javascript" and "pdf." I had to add the spaces 'cause this forum insisted on making a smiley face out of the colon and the d. The script won't work with the spaces in...

4) Then, just tap outside the edit bookmark window and ta da - you've created a bookmarklet.

With the bookmarklet, once you are at a web site you wish to save, merely press that bookmarklet and Safari will create a PDF of that page. And, you'll be able to open it in whatever app you've got that's compatable.

Let me know if that works.

Marilyn

P.S. A lot of bookmarklets work in the iPad's Safari; I've got 15 so far (Instapaper, Readability, Open in iCab, Open in Atomic, Search Amazon, Save to GoodReader, etc.). Finding/adding/using Safari bookmarklets is kind of fun ... so I look for 'em. PM me if you want my list - or the scripts.

 

[chowdown]

Great info there, thanks Marilyn.

Btw Pluto, you may already know that you can take a screenshot of anything on the iPad's screen by pressing the Home and the Sleep buttons together for 1 second. You'll find the resulting jpg in the Photo app.

 

[pluto6]

Marilyn -

Thanks so much. I used to consider myself to be quite an expert. Back in the days before the internet, I was a sysop of a national BBS. I n recent years, I am more just interested in something working, and not so interested in power techniques, and so have become somewhat of a noob.
I'll PM you.


@chowdown - thanks, I have known that technique, but that only works for information that fits on one screen, and I want to be able to choose the size of what I am copy / pasting.

 

[Sridhar]

Notes plus price has been reduced from $5.99 to $1.99 during 1 day sale.

See https://twitter.com/aplusatwork/status/26569726670934016

Just bought it.